The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has told the world via Twitter he found child porn on his computer, and called his paper to save him, leaving the comments wondering if the FBI need to step in – or he was simply scammed.
“Someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography,” Krugman tweeted on Wednesday. “I might just be a random target,” he added in the now-deleted tweet, “but this could be an attempt to Qanon me. It’s an ugly world out there.”
Come again? Krugman was immediately savaged for what commenters saw as an act of pre-emptive ass-covering. “Good one @paulkrugman,” one wrote. “I’m sure the @FBI will totally buy it.”
As Krugman was dog-piled online, he took the matter not to law enforcement, but to his employers at the New York Times. After all, where else would a smeared liberal journalist run to than into the protective arms of the liberal media.
A short while later and evidently after a chat with his bosses, Krugman tweeted “Times thinks it may have been a scam. Anyway, will have more security in future.”
So did Krugman, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, out himself as a pedophile for the whole world to see? Highly unlikely. Instead, the 66-year-old writer likely fell for a ‘spearphishing’ scam, in which pop-up ads or emails warn gullible computer users that child porn has been found on their PC, usually accompanied with a request to hand over money to make the problem go away.
Looking back through Krugman’s twitter feed, it seems he’s not the most computer literate writer at the Times. Krugman has a history of falling for internet scams, whether they’re attampts to hack his Facebook account, or sign him up for sites offering “live sex cams.”
He also has a history of making terrible predictions. In 1998, Krugman wrote that “the growth of the internet will slow drastically,” and “by 2005 or so, it will become clear that the internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” He also predicted in 2016 that Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election would bring about “a global recession, with no end in sight.”
Neither have come true, yet based on recent events, the internet continues to regularly vex and frustrate Krugman. At least he hasn’t sent any money to Nigerian princes...yet.
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